Welcome to the first John’s Music Blog Reader Mailbag. I’ve been getting a nice trickle of questions over the past few weeks, seemingly primarily from a certain end of the John’s Music Blog readership, but a nice trickle nonetheless. I appreciate everyone who has written. There’s a fair amount to get to, so let’s just fucking jump on in… (Also, the second edition of my monthly Nina column is out now. It features all sorts of shit, but most importantly, there’s an interview with the legendary American comics artist Brian Blomerth about his studio listening habits.)
Joel Asks: Your blog is awesome. I love reading it. I especially love the listening in public sessions. I do a vinyl night in a kind of unexpected location, so I feel particularly connected to the governing conceit of those posts. My question is: are there any public places where you have encountered unlikely good music? Not like some hipster hang out where cool people are expected, but, like, a place for regs where the music is poppin?
I’m going to split the difference here and talk about a remodeled diner in Greenpoint called Manhattan Three Decker. The new proprietors of this space are the same people behind the Brooklyn hipster coffee chain Variety, and they didn’t change much about the spot other than hitting it with a surface revamp. It’s still a regular diner, with regular diner food and regular diner prices, but now the music programming is heavy on multiple decades of indie and alternative rock. It feels like you are inside a diner scene in a Gen X movie, which is to say that “Black Gold” by Soul Asylum might be playing in the background as you drink coffee, eat waffles, and talk about your dating life. Manhattan Three Decker is always busy, with lines on the weekend. Is there a diner shortage in New York?
Jean-Luc Asks: Not sure what we’re meant to put on here but your music has meant a lot to me. As well as the artist you’ve posted on this blog. What do you think about blp kosher? Have you heard yunè pinku?
BLP Kosher’s music has yet to do much for me, though I thought his most recent collaboration with BabyTron was pretty good. Problematic politics aside, “I would rob a cougar just to go and buy a pair of Pumas” is a bar. I was curious to check out BLP’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—all I could find was this. I had not heard of yunè pinku before, but now I am now enjoying her newest single. It’s solid jacking electro, the way they used to do it back in the Bush II years, and it sort of makes me wish I still had a few of those Members Only jackets I copped in high school.
Fred Asks: Bands/people that were best/your favorite at sampling?
I could probably talk about “people that are great at sampling” for days, but I’m kind of fried from the multiple cups of Nescafe I drank this morning, so I’m going to focus on one group that existed outside of both rap and rave. I loved the way that the 2010s-era “art band” Odwalla88/1221 handled samples. They found fleeting moments—an errant feedback drop from a straight edge hardcore tape, a stray pop snippet—and used them as a bed to create skeletal songs, almost as much poetry as music, that sounded like they were slipping through the cracks of subcultural history in real time. It was a band that found their own space in the game.
Travesty Asks: daft punk @even further 1996/DP first US live show being in wisconsin or just open ended query, prompt: wondering any thoughts or notes on drop bass network ??
I was emailing a friend about Drop Bass a few weeks ago, actually. I sent her a link to this DBN flier archive, which has captured my imagination big time over the past few years. In terms of musical programming and visual aesthetics, Drop Bass was ahead of most of their American rave contemporaries. After a certain point, the crew’s fliers started drawing from the history of American subculture (punk, psych, metal) as much as the aesthetics of rave. Maybe not unprecedented, but executed on a high level. Take a look at this one, from 1999. A fair amount of IDM on that bill. Bogdan Raczynski!
Bobby Asks: Sorry I missed the first call for questions but as a big fan of John's Music Blog, I had to throw something out there. And being a Chicagoan who also loves Milwaukee, I would like to hear some more about those shows you came down to Chicago to play or just to watch that you wrote about recently, whatever genre! Sounds like it could be a source of some more great writing and new music discovery. Thank you for your service to music blogging.
Some of the earliest shows I played in Chicago were not in Chicago at all but rather in Oak Park, Illinois, a pleasant suburb that was the home of both Earnest Hemmingway and Tavi Gevinson. I’ve built up a lot of lore in my own mind about my performance history, as many performers do, but in this case, those shows did lead to something years later: a book not written by me that’s about (among other things) my failed career as a musician. Some days, I’m convinced that I must continue to write about the 20 years I spent playing bad shows for 20 people, because some (most) days it feels like that history is poking and prodding at my brain!
Reader Jeff Sumner Asks: This past week I’ve found myself listening to tearing drum n’ bass and Christmas music (good, bad and otherwise), and it got wondering: what do you recommend as far as either stadium drum n’ bass (like Pendulum, Noisia, any of the slicker/bigger D n’ B post-2010) OR Christmas music? Christmas songs in drum n’ bass style?
When it comes to semi-contemporary drum and bass maximalism, J Majik & Wickaman’s “Mosquito” has always done it for me. It’s throbbing, it’s swarming, and it’s got a funny swing. And you know what else? It features a sample of what sounds like a British educational presenter. It would be hard to want anything more out of life, let alone drum and bass music. On the Xmas tip, if for whatever insane reason you’re searching for some Christmas music with a side of emo twinkle, check out this Dismemberment Plan cover of a Donny Hathaway classic.
Josh Reynolds Asks: What are your thoughts on Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, and Son Volt? Maybe none, which is fine.
At a certain juncture in my musical development, I actively took a stance against a few strands of conventional indie rock, alt-country among them. Then, after a point, I started to open myself up to everything. Still, it took until the pandemic to fuck around with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. One thing I like about that record is the dumbass Y2K production tricks. Another example of post-OK Computer, post-Beck studio insanity applied to a somewhat straightforward Midwestern band is The Promise Ring’s final album. More Midwest: Wilco’s breakbeat pop song, “Heavy Metal Drummer,” sounds a lot like JMB favorite Graham Hunt’s recent music, now that I think about it. In terms of contemporary alt-country, I’m a fan of Wednesday’s sludgy take on the style; I’m not as sold on Wednesday member MJ Landerman’s solo work, though his recent cowbell-powered, Malkmus-stained single “Rudolph” is one of the best indie rock songs of 2023.
John Asks: OK, got one: in your opinion, what's the funniest/most entertaining example of a major label signing a weird/unconventional/underground band? Examples where the decision backfired are strongly encouraged.
There is a Spin article from 2013 that gets into this better and more thoroughly than I ever could, at least when it comes to ‘90s shit, but I wasn’t able to get that piece to load on my browser. Just another dead body to throw into the content grave pit (Rate Your Music has an archive of the list). The book Sellout by Dan Ozzi provides a nice overview, too, looking at major label jumps from the ‘90s to the mid-2000s. Flashing forward: Though Certified Trapper’s deal with the Columbia Records imprint Signal makes sense on a speculative, data-driven level, from a formal standpoint, it might be the contemporary version of Boredoms singing to Warner Brothers. They are two equally psychedelic entities.
Cognative Todd Asks: Just wondering if you have any thoughts or reflections you'd like to share looking back on the state of the thunderzone endeavor, and whether something like that would have taken off on a different trajectory if it had found on a home on the tik tok of today rather than the utube of yesteryear. Apologies, know there is a lot to unpack there and it's a pretty massive question to try to "answer;" overall just curious about such a crazy and impressive undertaking. It truly was remarkable to follow, know it got real dark at times but as with everything you do, very much respect and appreciate your dedication.
For those readers who do not know about my long and confusing life as a musician and a “content creator,” around a decade ago, I did a weekly vlog for a full year straight. On the surface, they were made to keep my tiny fanbase updated on the comings and goings of both my solo project and the label I was running at the time. But it wasn’t really about that at all. It was about one idiot having a continual mental breakdown as he hopped from sublet to couch to basement floor, from Los Angeles to Milwaukee to New York City, from bad to worse to maybe a little better. I’ve always ridden the line between bleak and triumphant. My favorite American autofiction writer is Steven “Brody” Stevens. May he rest in peace.
Ezra Asks: Hi John! Thanks for the music blog! I like the humor and personal tone to the blog. Are you influenced by other blogs, columns, books, commentators etc? Any recommendations?
When it comes to blogs, here is a very incomplete list of stuff I enjoy, off the top because I am running out of time: every newsletter that I recommend on my homepage; everyone involved with Nina’s editorial thing; The Martorialist; Billdiffern… A few physical publications I like are Baited Area and Sex Magazine… I read an interesting piece today on Stereogum about Zoomer shoegaze… The music book I am currently getting into is Thurston Moore’s memoir, which, despite maybe lacking a bit of “analytical depth” is still a good read if you are a nerd, which I am…
And, finally…
Confused in Charlottesville Asks: The question is whether I’m missing anything by remaining willfully unaware of Taylor Swift’s music. To be clear, it’s not like I have no idea what her music sounds like. My ex had 1989 on CD in her car circa 2015, so I've heard that album a lot, and in 2013 I watched a funny video where the chorus of “Trouble” was interpolated with the sound of a goat squawking. I could probably pick a Taylor Swift song out of a lineup, and might even be able to hazard a good guess about the title based on ambient awareness and themes from the lyrics.
My question is really whether I’m missing anything by refusing to sit down and actively listen to any of her albums, for fear that I might enjoy them. “Missing anything” might mean two things here. First, I’m curious whether I’m underselling her music by assuming that it’s bad. As a 32 year old and a new father, I’ve done plenty of self-study over the past few years, and have come around to the idea that many of my knee-jerk negative reactions to certain kinds of pop music are nothing but the calcified remnants of the red line I drew in middle school between bands like Nirvana (good, because their hooks were delivered amid a certain amount of noise and lyrical abrasiveness/incoherence) and bands like Green Day (bad, because their music seemed intended to be “fun”). In other words, I wonder whether I’m needlessly denying myself some pleasure because I’m still living by a twelve-year-old boy’s arbitrary standards of what makes good art. (For that matter, am I missing anything because I still haven’t engaged with Green Day?)
The other thing I wonder if I’m missing is the ability to be in conversation. I teach at the college level, and even my students who “hate” Taylor Swift are obviously aware of her big hits, her personal life, and so on, to say nothing of the 20% of students who’ve come to class at least once wearing Eras Tour drip. I can riff with the best of them on most of the TV shows they watch, but when one of my students came in wanting to chat about Travis Kelce, I had no idea what she was talking about. I don’t care about passing as younger than I am, but it seems to me that being able to talk cogently about what’s up is another pleasure that I may by denying myself. Middle-school me might argue that it’s not commendable to want to be eat of the monoculture wrought by algorithms and media consolidation, because after all you are what you eat. I don’t entirely disagree with that stance, but I’ve gotten less dogmatic over the past two decades, and the new year’s about to roll around, and my final grades are all submitted, so I have time for some pondering.
This is kind of an advice column question. I’m not sure if this is what you intended for these reader mailbag submissions, but for what it's worth, I think you’d be a good advice columnist. Okay, that’s all. Thanks for reading.
There is a “lot to unpack here,” and I’m not sure if I am the one to do it. Prescriptive life advice might fall outside of my wheelhouse. I mean, I can barely keep my own life from falling off the rails. But I’ll try to talk a little bit about music. With pop music, it can be a nice exercise to attempt to ignore cultural context and take things on a song-by-song basis. Personally speaking, I’m able to enjoy, say, “August” by Taylor Swift as a discrete piece of music, separate from all the stan armies and the TMZ gossip, because I have a soft spot for hooks—Taylor Swift knows how to write ‘em, and sometimes they hit for me, but that’s just me. And then there’s the process: If “Since U Been Gone” was Max Martin’s dream of a Top 40 Yeah Yeah Yeahs song, then “August” might be Jack Antonoff’s reimagining of The Sundays. I don’t feel great about that sentence, but I do find that kind of shit interesting, maybe because I write songs myself. Either way, it has nothing to do with a 24-hour news cycle.
I don’t think any adult needs to engage with new music, and in fact, I often feel embarrassed about my continued interest. I care about this stuff because I have made a lot of questionable choices in my life. If you are a gainfully employed adult with a child, you should bask in the fact that you don’t have to give a shit.